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In a bookshop this evening, I heard an author’s interview. An older woman, slightly out of breath, filled the room with her expressive and nervous answers to literary questions, some off topic and pointless, with a spirit of ever readiness. About her characters, whether she misses them when the novel is done, if she thinks about them, all of which made me think: authors writing novels make worlds in which they can talk to themselves. Books: hypothetical worlds. Why Robbe-Grillet stands out as an architect more than a writer, and why books have to be full of the character of their author.